no answer is a solution
by rainbowswirl
Summary: "Do you ever wonder what it would be like?"


"Do you ever wonder what it would be like?"

"What?"

"If I was Anna. Not Elizabeth. Do you ever wonder what it would be like?"

* * *

Obnoxious seems to be the general theme.

The carousel's lights are bright and nearly blinding against the slowly setting sun, the music is far too loud and high-pitched and repetitive, and there seems to be a sea of children refusing to shut up or settle down or _something_. Booker's first instinct is to turn around and go back to where he came, but a smaller hand immediately tightens around his, like it just knows the thoughts beginning to wake in his mind. He sighs an exaggerated sigh, waving toward the carousel dramatically with his free hand, accompanied by a tiny, mocking bow.

"You're a horrible parent," the owner of the hand comments, her words laced with repressed laughs. Her hand falls away from his regardless, instantly falling to her skirt to straighten the wrinkles caused by the wind. She nods to herself happily when she's pleased with her appearance, widening her smile at Booker in the same mocking manner he used with her.

"Ain't you too old for this?" he mumbles, not really a question.

"It's 'aren't,'" she corrects instantly, almost absentmindedly, as she takes his hand again and begins to drag him forward slowly, rolling her eyes at his reluctance to take every step. "And _no_, I'm not too old. No one's too _old_." Her nose wrinkles, as if the implication itself is an insult. "Even you," she adds, meeting his blank stare as she pulls hard on his arm, jerking him forward again. "And you're pretty old. Can we just get on, please? Preferably before it shuts down for the night. I'm not against convincing you into doing something illegal." She huffs, but her grin remains. "I want to ride a fake horse with all the little kids. It's _fun_."

Booker could probably hold his place for the rest of the night physically, but Anna's knack for complaining would probably drive him half-crazy within a couple minutes. There wouldn't be a point. She always manages to win somehow.

* * *

"You need to stop drinking," she tells him, an evident frown embedded into her features, as she presses a wet cloth against his forehead. Booker just groans and swats at her, mutters something that doesn't exactly sound like English (even to his own ears) but elicits a sigh from Anna, and rolls onto his stomach, allowing the cloth to fall to the side.

When he opens his eyes again, he can see, out of his peripheral vision, Anna standing off to the side, the bottle of whiskey in her hand. She seems to be staring at it intently, fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle tightly, but everything blurs before him and Booker can't completely, honestly understand anything that he sees. It could be a dream, for all he knows. It'd be better off that way. It wouldn't make any more sense to him at the moment, but everything he thinks he sees, he doesn't like. It reeks of disappointment. It's worse than the alcohol on his breath.

When Booker wakes up, the damp cloth is resting on his slightly aching forehead again. No empty bottle sits next to the bed.

* * *

"Why Paris?" he asks one morning, in between bites of food. Anna looks away from her book to answer, but pauses momentarily at the sight of him eating, furrowing her eyebrows and pursing her lips. She always does that. Whenever she sees him eating, she does that. Booker doesn't understand it and he's never asked before and considering the almost judgmental glint to her gaze, he's never going to. But he notices it, every time, and her expression seems to brighten in response, every time, like she's taunting him. '_I would never think something so terrible about you, father-dearest, what ever do you mean?_'

Yeah. Right.

Anna shrugs, eyes drifting back to the page of the book in her hand. He squints his eyes. Something about quantum mechanics? Hell if he knows.

"It's not the_ only_ place I'd like to visit," she says, finally, but her response seems half-hearted. Everything about her seems distant. "I've read about plenty. But Paris just sticks out, for some reason. I've never understood why." Anna lifts her eyes again, offering him a small quirk of her lips. "It could be the Eiffel Tower. I've always dreamt big. It would be suiting to like a city with a huge, triangular tower, wouldn't it be? Big things are the result of big dreamers. I think so." She flips a page, but she doesn't appear to pay attention to any of the words; somehow, Booker feels like she's somewhere else completely. Maybe not physically, but Anna's mind is far him away from now.

And maybe it always has been. Booker has never been able to understand her as much as he'd like to. But he's trying. He's trying to understand as much as he can.

He swallows his last bite. "Yeah?"

Anna seems to snap back into reality. She lifts her shoulders again, focusing entirely on her book of science-y shit, silently dismissing the subject. Booker clears his throat.

"Well," he says, awkwardly, "I'll, uh... one day, we're gonna go. All right? We'll go to Paris."

* * *

One hand around another bottle. One hand brushing Anna's hair away from her eyes.

"You look so much like your mother, y'know that?" he slips, nearly choking around a sob that he manages to keep firmly in his throat. Her lips quiver, but he doesn't notice. "A lot. S'much like her. More her than me."

This isn't the first time this has happened. The topic itself is a rarity, but when he drinks, Booker opens his mouth, and he's prone to say things he regrets later. Talking about his wife is one of them. He talked about her a lot more when Anna was younger. It was always to himself, always in his bedroom, but if she pressed her ear against the door, she could listen to him speak to her with slurred words. She used to wonder if he cried. She wondered if it made any difference whether he did or not.

"Come on, dad," she says, pushing his hand away to grab his arm and hook it around her shoulders. "We need to get you to bed. I'll get you some water for the morning, but you should really rest. You have work in the morning. This was a bad idea." Anna grunts underneath the weight, trying her damnedest to ignore the pained expression that blooms across her father's face because she can't _deal_ with this, she can't deal with being a constant reminder of his loss. She doesn't forget that her mother died during _her_ birth. She's perfectly aware.

It's a question she sometimes asks herself. If he blames her. The drinking certainly doesn't provide any evidence to the contrary.

* * *

"Why're you askin' that?"

"Because I do. Because I think Booker DeWitt would be a good father. Because it's nice to believe that we were happy together once. Don't you think so?"

"No. I don't."


End file.
